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Backyard Birding in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas: Surrounded by great birding destinations, our favorite patch is still the backyard (or the front), where we've seen more than 270 species of birds. Sit awhile, and watch the river and yard with us!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

With less than three weeks remaining in 2010, the countdown has begun in earnest--at least in my yard. I had hoped to have 200 species on my current Year-in-the-Yard List by the end of the year.
I doubt we'll make that count, but it's been a great year anyway. We've even added several species to our cumulative Yard List. Among them are the Magnificent Frigate Bird that blew in with Hurricane Alex, the noisy Green Parakeet that flew squawking through the yard in October, and the tinyCerulean Warblerthat flitted in the treetops one day during spring migration.

Pine Warbler?

Yesterday another first-time visitor dropped by for a bath: a Pine Warbler in its drab winter plumage, reminding me of why Roger Tory Peterson's pages of "Confusing Fall Warblers" always intimidated me so much. (If my childhood hero, author of my first field guide, most famous birder in the country, found these birds "confusing," how could I ever be expected to sort them out?)

Orange-crowned Warbler

Sitting in my "blind spot" under the anacua tree on Saturday afternoon, hidden by the camouflage of my little tent , I carelessly assumed for a minute or so that all the drab little warblers on the pedestal bath and saucers were Orange-crowned Warblers and the ones with wing bars were the White-eyed Vireos which had been hanging out with the Carolina Wrens. I snapped photos for a while and then put down my camera. When I looked closely without the awkwardness of holding a camera, I realized that one of the birds most definitely was not an OCW or any kind of vireo. Look at the photo at the top of this post--that little drab bird has distinct wing bars. It has gray auriculars (side face area). It is definitely a warbler, I decided. No streaks on back. definitely no yellow on rump. Maybe Bay-breasted Warbler? Pine? I continued to question myself and wished I had looked as long through binoculars as through the viewfinder of the camera.

Fortunately I had three pretty good photos, from front, side and rear. After consulting field guides I concluded that it was indeed a Pine Warbler, a first-time visitor to the yard. (Well, really, I'm sure other Pine Warblers have visited, I just haven't identified them. It's no accident that unusual birds always turn up in the yards of good birders. They are the ones who have the patience and birding skills. I know I'm missing things I should be seeing.)

One valuable birding tip I've heard is not to waste time in the field looking at a field guide. Look at the bird and when you can no longer do that, consult your guide. I used to miss good views of the bird because I was flipping pages. Now I'll add this additional memo to myself: don't forget to use your binoculars as well as your camera. I may miss a few shots but I won't miss the bird.

Here's another of the bathing beauties. I like to turn the dripper up so that the sight and sound of the gurgling, plopping, bubbling water draws the birds like a magnet. Water makes the birds look interesting--details that don't always show, like the orange crown of this Orange-crowned Warbler, are sometimes made more obvious.

I began writing this entry a couple of weeks ago and then didn't post it. I got distracted with last minute preparations for a trip out of state to be with children and grandchildren for Christmas . We left town a day or so after I took the bathing-beauty photos without seeing any additional species in the yard. But that's okay. I welcome all of our visitors, even the common and always multiplying House Sparrows and Great-tailed Grackles. It doesn't have to be a new yard bird to interest me-- but the count is fun. Blogging and keeping a Year List made backyard birding even more fun this year.

I'll finish the interrupted post now by adding the rest of the bathing photos. I'll keep the original date of December 12 on the post, but confess that it is actually December 30. I'm writing the end of this in a hotel as we stop for the night on our trip from Missouri to South Texas after a lovely holiday. I'm eager to get home for the last few hours of 2010 and especially looking forward to the first bird of 2011 to start my new list.

Here are the remaining photos from earlier in month:

Altamira Oriole and Great Kiskadee

House Sparrow and male Northern Cardinal

A delicately colored female cardinal seems to be anticipating the drop of water that comes slowly from the dripper in this bath. Just before I took this photo, I had adjusted the water so that it was no longer running as fast as in the previous photo.

This female Pyrrhuloxia is similar to the Cardinal but note the pattern of red around the eye and the yellow of the beak. (If you can't see her clearly, click to enlaarge. She's worth a good look.)

A pair of Great-tailed Grackles visit a ground bird bath. The brown female lacks the blue-black glossy feathers of her mate but is still quite attractive in her own way.

This shot of the driveway shows the location of two of the bird baths. Note the Cedar Elm that is beginning to show a bit of fall color now that it is mid-December. My little blind is hidden in the brush along the right side of the drive in this photo, across from the pedestal bath.

Okay, this guy isn't bathing, but how could I pass up an opportunity for another Green Jay photo? Sometimes I fill the water holders with seed since there's never enough for the ravenous jays.

A Long-billed Thrasher spends most of the day thrashing in dead leaves, but he hops to the saucer occasionally for a quick bath.

White-eyed Vireos seem to be bright, inquisitive birds. They travel around the yard with kinglets and warblers, eating small insects and singing cheerfully. This one was awaiting its turn at the bath below the fiddlewood shrub.

Who would ever tire of seeing the Yellow-throated Warbler? When they are not gleaning insects high up in the palm trees, they enjoy a quick stop at the bird bath.

One final thing to add to this post is a list of birds seen in the yard (or from the yard or over the yard) for 2010. Starting Saturday I'll have my 2011 list in the side bar and this one will disappear from that location, so I'll put the final 2010 list here. I'm a dozen or so short of my year goal of 200--but maybe some never-before-seen species are awaiting my homecoming tomorrow (Jan. 31) when I should have a couple of hours of daylight left!

The best part of listing a Year-in-the-Yard is that it motivated me to begin blogging. I won't have to find scattered bits of papers and try to find misplaced journals to know what happened in 2010. And the world of blogging is a whole new way of keeping in touch and even making new friends. I never expected that when I embarked on this blogging adventure a year ago!

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Today was so lovely that I spent much of it outside. It was just cool enough (high somewhere in the 70's) that I could sit in what is becoming one of my favorite spots: a chair blind under the anacua tree beside the driveway. It's a little folding lawn chair enclosed in a small attached tent with zip-out windows. The birds can't see me--or if they do they are not alarmed--and I can get pictures of them at the birdbaths close by. The Northern Mockingbird above was one of my first visitors. He's taking a break from defending the ripening fiddlewood berries on the shrubs near the deck.

Another bather was this stunning bird--a Yellow-throated Warbler that hung upside down on a branch of the oak tree and then flittered in to the terra cotta saucer-baths. A common yard bird for us in the winter, it's nonetheless a special guest.

Green Jays are all over the yard, having had an apparently very successful nesting season. Even noisier today than the Kiskadees, with buzzy croaks and snores and cheh-cheh-chehs, the jays ruled the yard. The bather above looked unusual with its outer yellow tail feathers being the only ones in its tail! The jay below, messily eating the orange suet cake, displays the blue/green tail that is typical.

Green Jays don't seem to fly long distances. They fly from tree to tree, landing near the bottom and hopping to higher branches. They follow one another, tails flashing yellow V's of those outer tail feathers, and make a ruckus with their odd sounds.

Black-crested Titmouse

Other birds I saw at the baths from my "blind spot" included Carolina Wrens, Black-crested Titmice , a White-throated Sparrow, a Baltimore Oriole, Orange-crowned Warblers, an Ovenbird, Great-tailed Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds, Lesser Goldfinches, and lots and LOTS of House Sparrows.

Since the wind was relatively calm today, I could hear birds all around me as I sat in the blind. Once, as I played my Ibird Pro app to hear the call of a White-throated Sparrow, the sound of wings and feet on the camouflage tent fabric startled me. I think it was the titmouse pictured above but I was "blind" in my blind, at least to what was going on over my head.

While I was trying to get a picture of the warbler I heard loud familiar calls clattering overhead. It was a sound I knew I should know--but since it was out of place in that part of the yard, I couldn't quite figure out what it was. To get a good look at the noisy mystery birds, I would have had to climb awkwardly out of the little chair/tent contraption I was in, a move that would scare all the birds at the baths, so I remained where I was.

Later, when my neighbor told me he had seen five large Ringed Kingfishers flying over our yards south of the houses calling loudly their wild clattering rattle, I realized what I had heard. We usually see this largest of our three species of kingfishers on the north side of the yards, along the river, in ones or twos, but today they were flying high in a group over the front yards. Later from the deck I took a photo of one of them. He's just a dot above the palms, but that shape is unmistakable. I missed the parade of five of the chattering giant kingfishers, but I didn't miss their chatter!

The most contant bird sound of the day was one that might be my favorite: the resonant rolling call of the Sandhill Cranes as they fly overhead to the fields across the way.

When I wasn't in the blind, I was on the deck that overlooks the front yard, another favorite viewing spot, especially nice since it's attached to the upstairs of the house and is convenient for viewing birds before I'm even dressed for the day--pajama birding. This morning I was rewarded for putting niger thistle in the finch feeder by a visit from American Goldfinchs and Pine Siskins. The siskin is especially welcome since it is not often here and because it reminds me of bird-feeding in Oklahoma when my children were young. Whenever it snowed, and the finches were thick around the feeders, my son would stand with arms outstretched and birdseed in his upturned palms, waiting for almost-tame-with-hunger pine siskins to eat from his hands.

A Carolina Wren serenaded me from the bougainvillea nearest the deck, the reddish-brown of his breast especially bright, maybe because of the morning sun and maybe because it echoed the deep apricot of the nearby blooms.

Out by the road a small brown bird with a white eye-ring called to an echoing bird in a brasil tree. It was too far to see just what it was though its call was distinctive. I'll figure out what it is and maybe post that later. For now, I'm including its picture because the background, so different from the wren's blooming backdrop, looks almost like trees in winter in northern climates. Of course, what it's actually perching in is not winter woods, but a brush-pile of dead branches.

Our trees are still green with foliage, but the winter of my imagination (where branches are bare and snowy Pine Siskins eat from a little boy's hand) can almost be seen in this picture.

Yard List 2012

Despite an overcast and blustery day on January 1, we were able to window-bird for 46 species on the new year's list. By the end of January, we had 100 birds, exactly the "goal" we set. (Last year's list of 214 Yard Birds can be found in the post for December 31, 2011.)